I was at a seminar recently where the invited speaker was a vendor. The
presentation was at a suitably technical level. The problem was not
*enough* self-promotion by the vendor: After a good explanation of
problems and solutions we had to ask "But what products and services is
your company offering to combat these problems, and at what prices?"
No point in having a vendor come in if they're not vending. But I agree
that product shilling shouldn't overwhelm the presentation.
--Bob.
On 13-12-15 10:42 AM, unsolicited wrote:
> Ach. I dunno, there's been some decent ones too. At wwitpro too. e.g. An
> MS Sharepoint presentation there worked out quite well - they rose to
> the level of the audience. Rose above newbieness to 'what is this
> beastie' and not much more, because the audience at the time wasn't
> ready for much more.
>> VMware at kwlug was almost as good. Started out VERY sales pitchy but by
> the end, given the nature of the audience, were getting right into the
> technical stuff for us. Also an, in the end, good experience. To me,
> anyways. But it sure didn't start out well.
>> Perhaps it depends upon what department they come from, and whether or
> not it's a pre-packaged sales pitch presentation, vs something from the
> tech. department?
>> Part of the problem with both groups is finding the right balance
> between professional development looking to leverage work environments,
> and non-professional home users looking to expand their knowledge.
> Particularly that those in the profession live the ecosystem for many
> hours each day and so bring a lot of background knowledge and comfort to
> any seminar. While the home user often struggles to comprehend the
> nature of the rather big ecosystem out there. Easy example is SANS, and
> fibre, let alone non-default file systems, which the home user wouldn't
> normally experience. To know it's even out there, let alone its nature
> or ramifications.
>> Cloud is an easy example where the latter probably applies for the vast
> majority - few in either camp will be directly involved in cloud
> configuration, and I doubt the majority of home users have played with
> vm's - it taking a certain amount of horsepower to do so, if they even
> see the point for them in their home environment.
>> A less than deeply technical, these are the finer points of apache ini
> cache configurations in your multi-homed active swap configuration, vs
> 'what is this beastie' and 'what buying criteria points should I care
> about and how do I implement them' will likely suit the majority.
>> It probably depends upon which department the presenter comes from?
>>> On 13-12-15 06:40 AM, Richard Weait wrote:
>> On Dec 15, 2013 1:04 AM, Andrew Sullivan Cant
>> <acant at alumni.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>>>>> Me too....I'll try to connect with someone at Fibernetics and see
>>> where things go.
>>>>>> My original thought was an engineering focused presentation, if
>>> that was possible, and not just a sales focused one. It would seem
>>> more appropriate given the audience.
>>>> I remember organizing a commercial presentation for kwlug a few years
>> back. I won't name names because I found the experience wholly
>> unsatisfactory. The company agreed to put on a technical
>> presentation, not a sales pitch. They agreed to take specific
>> technical questions. What they delivered was merely a mind numbing
>> tech-free sales pitch. and so I do not trust that company at all for
>> anything. And I do not look forward to having any other company
>> desecrate a kwlug meeting. The experience was horrible last time.
>>> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
>kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 263 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20131215/d077569c/attachment.bin>